Best Project Names

Anyone ever come across any good project code names? I can't really say I have - I try to slip in something dirty but it never makes the cut. I'm currently working on one where the name is sly reference to a disliked former CEO of the company, but it's so inside there are like 4 people who get it. I've been told it's supposed to be alliterative to the subject company name, but I find this holds only about 50% of the time.

34 Comments
 

Explain to me the upside of "slipping something dirty" into a deal code name? The downside - it embarrassing your firm, annoying someone at your client who finds it unamusing and unprofessional, you getting fired, etc - I think I get.

 

Not a project name but was working on a public to private buyside advising a fund. We had a model running and everything and had to share it with the client at some point urgently. Too bad I forgot to change the password to something more normal. So we are on a call with the whole team MDs on both sides and I had to tell them that the password is ‘chicken’. They had a laugh about it but I got told off by my MD to be more creative with passwords?!

 
Funniest

There's an infamous asshole former CFO at the company I work at that was universally disliked across the finance groups. Some of the horror stories are insane, absolute jerk.

My director worked directly for him at one point and he got hammered at a happy hour and told me and a few other directors from our group a funny story about him: on a Friday night a few years ago, he recognized his Corvette Stingray in the parking lot (had a custom licence plate and was bright orange) at a local steakhouse. He pulled up next to him and looked into his car to see him making out with what appeared to be a blonde girl in her late teens/early 20s (the guy was married, in his 60s, and his wife had cancer). He jumped out of his car and hurried inside before the CFO would see that he had been caught.

A few weeks later after hearing this story, I'm put on a project and asked to do an analysis as part of the initial stages and present a briefing to our group. I had to come up with a project name for it as it was supposed to remain confidential outside of our group. So when the time came to present and I flipped the slide and "Project Stingray" appeared in the title of the slide, all the directors burst out laughing uncontrollably with all the analysts and managers confused as to why. Won me some great points with all the directors.

 

Haha I had this one crazy Director who used to have a bit of a weed problem. So when it came time to make project names we'd always use the name of his dealer at the time. People always thought it was weird how our project names seemed to always revolve around a Jamaican guy haha

Fuckin my way thru nyc one chick at a time
 

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Thanks, let me know if you ever need an introduction in the industry.
 

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